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I wasn't being obtuse, I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain your claims in your own words, because I didn't want to risk misrepresenting you. I also

I wasn't being obtuse, I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain your claims in your own words, because I didn't want to risk misrepresenting you. I also wanted to withhold judgement about your level of knowledge concerning the subject matter. > The question isn't "does it exist" it's "how is it being expressed today". I'm glad that you've come out and said that, because it drives right to the heart of the issue. The problem with the proposal to recast racism into the the mould of an immutable characteristic (I would say redenominating is also a good metaphor) is that we have developed a real moral aversion to transferring individual guilt for events permanently onto groups, and for good reason. On a related note, the problem with claims that we can identify racism through the disparate impact of policies on marginalized groups is that it tends to falsely equate correlation with causation, and in practice it tends to be the result of politically-motivated reasoning. Overall, I think you've perfectly illustrated the problem that the article was pointing to: "anyone who disagrees with my particular set of claims is bad, and anyone who then claims not to be bad is super-bad".

wpietri 5y ago
I see you've decided to make up a cartoon version of my views and argue with that. I'll try one more reply, but I'm not optimistic. I didn't say it was an immutable characteristic. I said it was an endemic problem. I would like it to go away, but we won't get there by pretending it has gone away. We have to make that happen, and that first requires looking honestly at the history and present facts of it. A positive example here is Germany. They stopped denying they had an antisemitism problem and have worked assiduously to remove it. And plenty of western nations have moved fitfully in the direction of acknowledging previous and current oppression. In the US, both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement are positive examples there. But in both cases, society gave up before finishing the job (see first and second Nadirs). My proposal: this time let's not let those trying to conserve oppression win. As with polio, it's perfectly possible to eliminate something endemic. But also as with polio, some people of a conservative bent will try to conserve even the harmful parts of the status quo. (My part of the US was settled by a bunch of Dutch who thought things like vaccines and insurance were refusing to accept God's will, for example. And in the modern era, the US right has caused at least a couple hundred thousand deaths through various pro-Covid actions.) So yes, conservatives trying to conserve harmful things may end up feeling bad about that. I'm fine with that. I understand that conservatives are used to being coddled by society, and that this is uncomfortable for them. As they say, when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. But my goal here is minimizing actual oppression, and I think that's more important than preserving the very delicate feelings of those who previously got away with not examining the consequences of their politics.

wpietri 5y ago

I see you've decided to make up a cartoon version of my views and argue with that. I'll try one more reply, but I'm not optimistic. I didn't say it was an immutable characteristic. I said it was an endemic problem. I would like it to go away, but we won't get there by pretending it has gone away. We have to make that happen, and that first requires looking honestly at the history and present facts of it. A positive example here is Germany. They stopped denying they had an antisemitism problem and have worked assiduously to remove it. And plenty of western nations have moved fitfully in the direction of acknowledging previous and current oppression. In the US, both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement are positive examples there. But in both cases, society gave up before finishing the job (see first and second Nadirs). My proposal: this time let's not let those trying to conserve oppression win. As with polio, it's perfectly possible to eliminate something endemic. But also as with polio, some people of a conservative bent will try to conserve even the harmful parts of the status quo. (My part of the US was settled by a bunch of Dutch who thought things like vaccines and insurance were refusing to accept God's will, for example. And in the modern era, the US right has caused at least a couple hundred thousand deaths through various pro-Covid actions.) So yes, conservatives trying to conserve harmful things may end up feeling bad about that. I'm fine with that. I understand that conservatives are used to being coddled by society, and that this is uncomfortable for them. As they say, when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. But my goal here is minimizing actual oppression, and I think that's more important than preserving the very delicate feelings of those who previously got away with not examining the consequences of their politics.